The Reaper Grim

By:  Aidan, 7^th grade

Death is, unlike most people assume, not a natural occurrence.  He is, in fact, a being.  And unlike fiction writers around the globe have suggested, he is not an anthropomorphic persona.  He is a person like you and me, except he doesn’t age.  And he doesn’t ride around on a skeletal horse, or wear a black hooded robe.  He rides in a really old car.  And wears greasy overalls.   And he doesn’t wield a scythe to harvest the souls from their previous bodies, and ferry them to the Underworld.  He, in fact, uses pliers.  And he has people to do the actual ferrying.  Specifically, the ferrywoman.  The ferrywoman of the dead is Death’s granddaughter.  She also happens to be seventeen. 

It was fall again, and time for school.  School.  Man, she hated school.  It was the most depressing part of Sarah’s life, and considering the fact that her night job was to ferry the souls of the dead, who weren’t, as a rule, very happy, that’s saying something.  And you would also anyone related to Death to be morbid, antisocial, and Goth.  That’s not true for Sarah.  Well, okay, the Goth thing’s not true.  She had got to the bus stop at exactly two minutes before it was suppose to pick her up and, twenty minutes later, the bus arrived.  ‘At least it’s going to be warm in the bus,’ she thought.  How wrong.   The bus heater had broken down, so there was no heat on the bus, but her two friends, the only ones she had, were on the bus.  She smiled at her friends and sat on the seat across from them.  Jenny, the (former) Goth, was looking surprisingly cheerful today, as there was no trace of her black Goth makeup.  Damien, the emo, however, was as gloomy as ever, with his long, greasy black hair covering his eyes and his hood up, obscuring what little of his face that wasn’t already covered in hair.  Still, he smiled at her as she sat down.  She caught up with the gossip of the popular world on the way to school.  When she got off of the bus, there was a tall man dressed in a white suit waiting at the entrance of the school.  As she walked up to the doors of the school, the man in the white suit moved to intercept her.  Right as she reached the big double doors, his hand reached out and grabbed the back of her coat.  He pulled her out of the great flood indoors with no apparent effort.  He dragged her over to a corner and said in a hushed whisper,

“I’m sorry, miss.  Your grandfather said to me, ‘you get that girl back here right now’.  That’s what he said.  I’m sorry, miss.” 

“I get it.” She sighed.  “What is it now?” 

“He’s here.”

“Who’s He?”

“Your grand father will tell you when we get there.  Now, hop on!”  The man’s white suit flickered and faded away, revealing a topless, tanned man.  Then the air around him shimmered, and two wings faded into sight.  ‘An angel,’ Sarah thought.  She clambered roughly onto his back.  He swept his white wings wide, and lifted off the ground.

An hour later, in a run-down New York auto-repairs shop, Sarah found herself conversing with a slightly pudgy man who appeared to be in his fifties.  With stained overalls and grease stains on his face, he looked like any other auto mechanic in America.  But he was, in fact, Sarah’s grandfather, Death. 

“So, who is this ‘He’ person?” Sarah asked.

“Well, it’s a bit of a long story, but to be frank, he is the Antichrist.”  Death sat with a look of grim resignation on his face.

“The Antichrist?”  Sarah gasped.

To be continued…